First, the good news: My friend is essentially okay, aside from some bumps and bruises. His bike took some damage, but likely not catastrophic: From what we could tell, both derailleurs on his bike and the bar tape were damaged; there may be other damage we couldn’t identify immediately, such as the handlebars themselves.
We were riding on this road with two lanes, no shoulder, and there’s a light at the bottom of a hill, with a right turn lane. The light was green, so our group was cruising at a pretty high pace - probably 25 or 30 mph - in the right lane (not the turn lane, the through lane) and some driver needed to turn right, but couldn’t wait a few seconds. So, they went into the LEFT lane, then turned right in front of our group, hit one of our riders, and kept going.
(“Must get in front…oh I have to turn here…” Shitty driving habits in general, I’ll bet.)
A few other cars stopped, and someone called the police, who took a report and got an ambulance to check out the victim. Hopefully they’ll do some investigation and find the guilty party. The cross street leads into a neighborhood with no other exits, so there’s a good chance the perpetrator lives there. Also there is a camera at that light, and one person thought to note the exact time it happened, in case the camera does continuously record.
I hope they find the driver. They deserve to pay for all damages and a huge fine.
Our friend commented that his bike was likely worth more than the minivan that hit him, which is almost certainly true, given it was an older model van and his bike is a high end Pinarello. He also noted that none of us stopped his bike computer, which was good for a laugh.
The ride leader’s husband was able to come and pick up her, the victim, and another rider that wasn’t comfortable continuing after the crash (we were only about halfway through the planned route). The rest of us pedaled on, albeit a bit more subdued for a while.
The reality of everything in this world is that if you have to wait for things to be perfect, you’ll be waiting forever.
Sure, cycling infrastructure isn’t great in North America. And some places (like, Ontario, Canada) have actively hostile campaigns against cyclists and remove any safety implements that have been established.
But if we don’t get on our bikes, it only proves that “nobody wants to cycle”, and the infrastructure will never get built.
And really, it’s not even about infrastructure anymore. We had a 13-year-old killed on cycling infrastructure because a driver ignored a stop sign.
We (like the entire world) need to make driving so inconvenient that it becomes the last choice to get around. Only then will people who 100% need to drive be behind the wheel. And because they need to drive, maybe they’ll pay attention to what they are doing.
I do sympathize with people who are afraid or put off by the risk of cycling in some places. I do get it, and there are areas where I live that I avoid cycling through. But I do cycle with the mindset that drivers are all idiots who aren’t paying attention and/or want to run me over. So even when I have the right of way, I assume that drivers will not acknowledge it.
Exactly, and unfortunately, we’re unwilling to do this in North America.
My city recently put in some iffy infrastructure where they removed a pretty strip w/ trees to add a dedicated turn lane and a stoplight (previously was a stop sign), which was less than a city block from a busy intersection (w/ light) to get onto the freeway. That intersection leads to a “continuous flow” intersection with yet another light, and the total goal seems to be to prioritizes short light times over total throughput.
General structure looks like this (I hope the ascii art works):
| light | | < onramp | === highway ===== | light | ============== | onramp > | | new lane | || - | new light | - | light |--- | || new houses || | || | || | light | ---- ||If we replace the light sandwiched between the onramps w/ a roundabout, eliminate the light just below the bottom onramp, and convert the new light (connects offices above and houses below to highway) to a roundabout, traffic should flow a lot more smoothly. Oh, and there’s a bridge over the highway to get from the “new light” to the light at the top of the diagram, so this light is merely a convenience so cars don’t need to drive an extra couple blocks.
This area especially pisses me off because there are three schools in that area served by the new light. So kids crossing the street force the lights to change, causing more slowdown. If it was a proper roundabout w/ pedestrian protection (or cars go straight instead of turning to go to the highway), crossing would be a lot more smooth. We should be funneling traffic around this area, yet the infrastructure is optimizing pushing traffic through.
I’m in a pretty small city (<40k people in the suburbs, surrounded by larger cities), but to me it’s a symptom of the problems we have in prioritizing car traffic over pedestrian traffic, and I think it makes everything end up taking longer despite looking like it’s making things better for cars. It’s really dumb. Oh, and a lot of the traffic is massive trucks, and those absolutely should be routed around the main school crossings instead of through them.